Deep Sunset in Destin, Florida

Looking west, out over Choctawhatchee Bay.

Wringing out the last bit of day.

Kathy Mattea

Another singer I like.

"A Few Good Things Remain"

Used Poem VI

    Requiem for a Mind

Hands trembling hold the chair
Across her forehead knots of hair
Concealed her dying brain within,
Each tiny cell a requiem.

The vigorous spark of life no more.
Each dendron slack, still, a silent door;
Behind the curve of cranial bone
Knowledge lies without a home

The mind that once directed one,
Decisive action planned and done,
Now thrash in ragged disarray
To dull her glance with sad dismay.

This central power, this wondrous map
Of buzzing chemistry and magnetic zap
Will die and so, too, end all her confusion.
Her life gone, so then that mind’s occlusion.

DNJ

Don Williams

"Good Ole Boys Like Me"

This song pretty well "nails it" for many of us growing up in the '50s — in the South.

Korean Car Ad — Funny

A Favorite from the Eighties

I don't like many songs of the 80s. This one I like:



"The Living Years" – Mike and the Mechanics

Father: William David James
October 14, 1919 - December 12, 2006

Photos by Eudora Welty

Before she was a writer she was a photographer.
Photos are titled: "Sunday Morning", "Underwear"and "Kite".

More of her work shown here.

Eva Cassidy

September 2, 1963 — November 2, 1996

"Songbird"



More about Eva, her life, her sad death.

Despair

Aimee Mann

One of my favorite singers from her CD: "The Forgotten Arm" and the video is from some TV show called "House".

Click it to listen and watch:
That's How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart

Another From "The Forgotten Arm"
Video

Other Venues:
Save Me _— from movie: "Magnolia"
Red Vines

Namib-Naukluft National Park — Namibia

The Deadvlei area in Namib-Naukluft National Park — the dunes of the Sossusvlei — in the oldest desert on earth.

Gary Stewart — a tribute

May 28, 1945 - December 16, 2003

In my opinion, Gary Stewart is one great "Honky Tonk" Country singer.




His Sad Life's Story

I Love This Guy!
Want some more?

Drinkin' Thing

She's Acting Single, I'm Drinking Doubles

You're Not The Woman You Used To Be

I See The "Want To" In Your Eyes

Johnny Cash — a tribute.

February 26, 1932 - September 12, 2003


I Still Miss Someone

With Kris Kristofferson

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

If five years ago, someone had asked me, “what about a duet fusing rock star, Robert Plant (age 63, former terrific lead singer with Led Zeppelin) with Alison Krauss (age 40, a terrific blue grass artist)?" I would have smiled and asked, “what are you smoking?” Well, well-known music producer, T- Bone Burnett put the duet together and created a CD: “Raising Sand”. I like a lot of music. A lot of different music. The best music I bought in 2008? Raising Sand.

Great blue grass! Click on:

Your Long Journey

Airlines - A Fading of Dynasties

By clicking on the below link, I promise you a treat.

The Way It Was

There are only a few of these airlines still flying. This
time next year more may fail with such fuel price volatility
and economic uncertainties. Everyone will enjoy this slide
show, whether you were an airline employee or a
passenger...we were all involved over the years
in some manner. Such great, bittersweet memories.

How sad that most have vanished, and how poignant is the
musical tribute: "Time to Say Goodbye", as sung by
Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli.

Those were the days, my friend(s).

Catching Her Drift

Going to college in Nashville, I had a girlfriend, Lynne Lastname, from Evansville, Indiana. Pretty. Tall, thin, long blonde hair. A “real” blonde. It‘s easy to tell. Anyway, I met her at a SCLC meeting about a month before Kennedy was shot.

On that sad November day, I was reading to a blind student from Kentucky, Larry Lastname, when my roommate, Terry Lastname, walked in and told me the news from Dallas.

Lynne and I spent a lot of time together in late November being pissed off at the senselessness of the assassination and quite depressed along with the rest of the country. I was profoundly affected. So much so, I wrote a short, sophomoric poem:

John is dead.
The world asks,
“Why”?
And Dallas asks,
“Why here?”

In the spring, Lynne moved off campus into an apartment. In the house next door lived a transvestite. His name was Larry. Many evenings, at or near dusk, Larry would prance out on his back patio dressed for an evening out and I guess looking for love. Slinky, almost always in a dark dress, pumps, stockings, well - coifed wig and lots of make-up: red, red lipstick, heavy mascara and eye shadow, etc. We never knew her name.

We used to laugh about it. Lynne said, "There’s a man and woman living next door. We never see them together, though. Strangest thing is they have the same shoe size".

One night, I said, "Imagine what trouble he must go through. I mean shower, probably shave his legs and maybe underarms, put on make-up, shape up and hook up his padded bra, rummage through the closet to find something fetching, check his stockings for runs, pull it all together, dress and go out to find what the evening has to offer... her. Imagine all the effort"

Lynne looked at me with a wry smile and said, "Yeah, just imagine."

Photo and story. Mystery solved.

I've been haunted by the frightened beauty of this little girl since I first saw her photo in National Geographic Magazine the mid-80s.

For the story: Click on.

National Geographic's Afghan Girl, Sharbat Gula- then at 13, found again at 30.

Photography ( the eyes have it.)

Photography and Photo Titles by Stefan Beutler
Subject: Katharina
Location: Erfstadt, Germany

Click to enlarge
"In The Dark"

"I Feel You"

An Edward Hopper Retrospective

For those who don't know, Edward Hopper is a mid-20th century realist painter and print maker. He's a favorite of mine.

This slide show video of his work is set to the song, "Saturday Night" (by The Blue Nile, a Glasgowegian group), sung by lead singer, Paul Buchanan. I think the music well-compliments a viewing of Hopper's work.

"My Lover Will Go"

The Photography?
by Daria Endresen

The Music?
by Ane Brun

Used Poem V

Foster Woman             

Her needful body’s chain of custody 
Was often passed around.
And she sometimes called herself 
The Isle of Man. 

Her magic, bold and Circean eyes   
Promised a warm harbor.
She bid the Manships berth
To offload generous seed.

Not one of these off-loaded vessels
Stayed beyond a night.    
She only paused at each
To accept proffered bounty.

She said she only found
The life she needed.
She said she never found
The life she wanted. 

DNJ                     

Must Love Dogs... to Love this Book.

I’m not much good at writing a book review. I’d much rather discuss it with someone who has also read the same thing, but, when I finished reading my pre- release copy – I was given an early heads up by “Book Slut”, a blog I follow — of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle , I became its evangelist, and touted it to everyone who would hold still. I finished the 566 page puppy in early June and since then have given copies as birthday presents (3) and Christmas gifts (4) and prevailed upon seven or eight other folks to read it. Based on their responses I’ve come to realize that there are probably two types of people in the world: those who will love this novel, and those who will hate it. The two opposing camps either say: “ I was up nights late with it, unable to put it down.” ( this was me, too ).

Or:

“To be honest, I hated it. I skipped entire pages of it. The narrative was really boring. He could have cut out half of the pages”. ( its heft alone will prevent many from choosing to read it on a whim. )

I was drawn to Wroblewski’s debut novel for two reasons. First, because dogs play a large part — a large part . The second reason was because I read that the story draws a parallel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And so it does. I think to fully enjoy the story’s sensibility one has to believe that dogs are thinking, feeling beings and also accept that the dogs dealt with in the novel are very special, highly intelligent animals. Indeed, Wroblewski goes to great lengths to persuade his readers of these traits, detailing the years spent developing the breed and the grueling hours of training each day it takes to make “a Sawtelle dog". Anyone who can’t accept dogs playing such a large role in a novel of this length isn’t going to be able to stand the book.

Almondine is the dog ( and, interestingly, the Ophelia character ) who nearly raises Edgar (the book’s Hamlet figure). Edgar’s first memory is this:

Between the honey-colored slats of the crib a whiskery muzzle slides forward until its cheeks pull back and a row of dainty front teeth bare themselves in a ridiculous grin.

The nose quivers. The velvet snout dimples... Fine, dark muzzle fur. Black nose, leather of lacework creases, comma of nostrils flexing with each breath... At once, the muzzle he knows is awake. It snorts. Angles right and left. Withdraws. Outside the crib, Almondine’s forequarters appear. Her head is reared back, her ears cocked forward.

A cherry-brindled eye peers back at him.
Whoosh of her tail.
Be still. Stay still.

Much of the novel is like this, simple communication between a boy and a dog. But, there is a complication: Edgar is a mute, so he signs everything to the dogs. The only point in the book where I was tempted to put it away, doubtful that dogs could do such a thing, was when Edgar has the dogs portray the murder of his father, to test his uncle, Claude’s conscience. But, remember this is Hamlet. The play within a play. But acted out by dogs? I was doubtful, but the training of the dogs to do this seemed somewhat plausible, and I willingly let Wroblewski pay the story forward. After all, the dogs memorize a simple sequence:

Roll on your back.
Carry this to the other dog.
Tag that dog.

One aspect of the novel that I feel makes “more” sense than in Shakespeare’s original is the relationship between Trudy ( the Gertrude character ) and Claude ( Claudius ), her deceased husband’s brother. In this story, she’s a complex woman, trying to run a farm on her own in rural Wisconsin in the mid-Twentieth Century. It makes sense for her to accept Claude’s offer to move back to the farm and help her to continue the line of Sawtelle dogs. We get to see far more of the inner workings of this relationship than in Hamlet.

Of course, Wroblewski takes a big risk here. But it’s one that works for me. But I must tell you this: I read much of the book sensing my best friend for eleven years, Joe, my big ol’ black Lab (deceased 10/2010), was reading along with me. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle isn’t for everybody. If you genuinely like dogs and maybe even have pictures of your dog on your desk ... or in your purse or wallet, I think you’ll be delighted with this tale. If not, I don’t know if you’ll make it past the prologue and first chapter. Me? I love dogs. I loved this book. "Saw Tell"(e).

Carolina Chocolate Drops

I know I posted this on the "class" blog a few months ago, but, I love these folks.

Used Poem IV

Two Different Worlds

The boy was sure of something,
She was just the one.
The girl was sure of nothing,
Her life had just begun.

For him, he'd found his partner,
There was never any doubt.
For her, he was fine for now,
But there was more to learn about.

He thought it was a perfect start,
Something bound to surely grow.
She thought it may be but a pause,
But had no words to tell him so.

DNJ

Herding Cats

A Song By Lucinda Williams

"Something About What Happens When We Talk"

Used Poem III

Silence Is The Perfect Answer

For days, she painted blue.
She painted until she was drunk with blue,
Until lines grew thick, like Picasso’s blue—
Not bones, but the shadows of bones
In desert's harsh light. 

She was painting in the place of making
And unmaking. Everything spilled 
Open, tugging loose, breaking the dry river
Stones until their geode hearts bled, not red,
But with the cerulean she chose to use. 

She heard the hawk cry thief, thief, 
Marking the air. In the silence after, 
She could almost trace the sound
Back to the beginning, to blue lines, 
Liquid with light, She named them. 

The Canyon. The Sediment. The Layers of Rock. 
Then she dropped the hawk’s feather from high 
Above and waited for the echo when it touched 
The canyon floor. She waited forever and forever 
And forever. No echo ever came.

DNJ

Lake Okeechobee, Fl- Fishing w/Son.

Photos: #1 At dawn, #2 9lbs.10oz, #3 Snowy Egrets

"Dublin Blues"

I'm really taken with Texas Country Rock.
I think it's the honesty I feel in the lyrics. Maybe it's another acquired taste... like martinis.

"Crying", Roy Orbison & K.D. Lang

Great song. These two enhance it with one of the best duet treatments of a popular song. Movie out takes in the video are from "Hiding Out" a 1987 film with Jon Cryer and Annabeth Gish. Frivolous, but not a bad '80s genre film.

"Blue Girl"

By Sabrina Cabada

Graham Gordy - Great article on writing

Double click on each page to make the type large enough to read.

Farm Sounds

Blues Singer's Woman Permitted To Tell Her Side

Ida Mae Dobbs, longtime woman of Blind Willie "Skipbone" Jackson,Sent me a letter to respond to charges levied against her by the legendary Delta blues singer.

"Despite what Mr. Jackson would have you believe, I am not an evil-hearted woman who will not let him be. I repeat: I am not an evil-hearted woman who will not let him be. To the contrary, my lovin' is so sweet, it tastes just like the apple off the tree. I was also accused of causing him pain and breaking his heart by calling out another man's name, I categorically deny treating him in a low-down manner.

"He say he send for his baby, but I don't come around, He say he sends for his baby, but I don't come around. Well, the truth is, I do come, but he is out messing with every gal in town. He compared me to a dresser because he say someone is always going through my drawers.

"My drawers have not been gone through by any man but Blind Willie "Skipbone" Jackson," Dobbs said. "Neither Slim McGee nor Melvin Brown has ever been in my drawers. Nor has Sonny 'Spoonthumb' Perkins, nor any of those other no-good jokers down by the railroad tracks. My policy has always been to keep my drawers closed to everyone but Mr. Jackson, as I am his woman and would never treat him so unkind."

“He say I open with my sweet-potato-pie distribution, my pie is available only to Blind Willie “Skipbone Jackson. I do not give out my sweet potato pie arbitrarily, as I am not the sort of no-good doney who engage in such behavi0r. Only one man can taste my sweet potato pie, and I believe I have made it perfectly clear to him who that man is. The same thing with my biscuits, which cain’t be buttered except by him.”

“He always say I be running around town with other men, ain’t no truth to it. He treat me so bad. One time he got me arrested for attempted homicide. In 1998, I had to call the ambulance on him. He rushed to the hospital and nearly died on me. He drunk nearly a coffee cup full of gasoline. Said I tried to by him by serving him a glass of gas when he when he asked for water. If I did that it was an accident."

Dobbs describes herself, a short-dress, big-legged woman from Coahoma County, said it is not she but Jackson who should be forced to defend himself. According to Dobbs, Jackson frequently has devilment on his mind, staying up until all hours of the night rolling dice and drinking smokestack lightning.

"Six nights out of seven, he goes off and gets his swerve on while I sit at home by myself. Then he comes knocking on my door at 4 a.m., expecting me to rock him until his back no longer has any bone," Dobbs said. "Is that any way for a man to treat his woman? I don't want to, but if he keeps doing me wrong like this, I am going to take my lovin' and give it to another man."

Added Dobbs: "Skipbone Jackson is going to be the death of me."

Dobbs said that until she receives an apology from Jackson and a full retraction of all accusations, he will not be given any grinding.

"Mr. Jackson says that I stay out all night and that I'm not talking right. He says he has rambling on his mind as a result of my treating him so unkind. He says I want every downtown man I meet and says they shouldn't even let me on the street," Dobbs said. "Well, I refuse to allow my name to be dragged through the mud like this any longer. Unless my man puts an end to these unfair attacks on my character, I will neither rock nor roll him to the break of dawn. I am through with his low-down ways."

(from The Onion 9/16/98)

Judgmental

Tonight Will Be Fine

Teddy Thompson sings a Leonard Cohen song. And he does it very well, in my opinion.

"Tonight Will Be Fine"

"Embed" denied by YouTube contributor

My Hometown

Bruce Springsteen — One of his more poignant songs. Some truth in it... for lots of folks.

So, now you wanna sing da Blues?

Subject: How To Become a Blues Musician — as it was told to me.

1. Most Blues always begin, "Woke up this mornin'..."

2. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town."

3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes... sort of: "Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like a bulldog and she weigh 500 pound."

4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch - ain't no way out.

5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and state-sponsored motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die.

6. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don't get rain.

8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg cause you were skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg 'cause a alligator be chomping on it is.

9. You can't have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting's wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.

10. Good places for the Blues:
a. highway
b. jailhouse
c. empty bed
d. bottom of a whiskey glass

Bad places for the Blues:
a. Nordstrom's
b. Gallery openings
c. Ivy League institutions
d. golf courses

11. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, 'less you happen to be a old ethnic person, and you slept in it.

12. Do you have the right to sing the Blues?
Yes, if:
a. you older than dirt
b. you blind
c. you shot a man in Memphis
d. you can't be satisfied
No, if:
a. you have all your teeth
b. you were once blind but now can see
c. the man in Memphis lived
d. you have a 401K or trust fund

13. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues.

14. If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the Blues. Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
a. cheap wine
b. whiskey or bourbon
c. muddy water
d. nasty black coffee

The following are NOT Blues beverages:
a. Perrier
b. Chardonnay
c. Snapple or Slim Fast

15. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broken down cot.

You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction.

16. Some Blues names for women:
a. Sadie
b. Big Mama
c. Bessie
d. Fat River Dumpling

17. Some Blues names for men:
a. Joe
b. Willie
c. Little Willie
d. Big Willie

18. Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Debbie, and Heather can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

19. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit:
a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)
b. first name (see above) plus a fruit, Lemon, Lime, Kiwi, etc.
c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.)

For example:
Blind Lime Jefferson,
Jakeleg Lemon Johnson or
Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not "Kiwi.")

20. I don't care how tragic your life — if you own a computer, you cannot sing the blues.

21. People with the Blues eat barbecue, corn bread, beans, and their last meal.

22. Good blues instruments: guitar, slide trombone, saxophone, trumpet, and harmonica.

23. Bad blues instruments: everything else, especially the oboe, French horn, and viola.

24. You got the blues if you have lumbago or a bad back. You don't have the blues if you have mental disorder ending in "syndrome."

25. Black Jack is a good blues game. Keno is not a good blues game.

26. Blues jobs include working on the railroad, picking cotton,musician, or just got fired.

27. Blues animals include the junkyard dog and mule (not donkey).

28. Epitaph on a blues musician's tombstone: "I didn't wake up this morning"

Rake

By Townes Van Zandt — One of my favorites. TVZ's music sort of speaks to life "en el otro lado."

"Well, many of the songs, they aren't sad, they're hopeless."
—Townes Van Zandt, after being asked why he only wrote sad songs.

About Townes Van Zandt

And, if you're really interested

Short, Short, Short Story II

Where do I find these things?

A Brave New World

Already eight years old and, still, he'd never even tried the closet door. Too scared. He'd been told not to. Now he stood before the forbidden oak door again, staring. But with courage this time. Recklessness perhaps.

He tentatively reached out a hand. It was unlocked! The door creaked open.

It was a door to another world. Not darkness, but light. Bright sunshine. He stepped through. Sweet air, birds singing, warmth and color embraced him on all sides. It was the magical world he'd dreamed of.

A paradise he enjoyed for two minutes, until they returned and shoved him back inside the closet.

Three By Leonard Cohen

A favorite poet, singer, song writer. Maybe an acquired taste?
"I'm Your Man"




Poem — a word song, actually.
"A Thousand kisses deep".


"The Letters"

Sarah Silverman humor

 My favorite Sarah Silverman jokes:
 

"I drank and smoked during pregnancy and then I read the pamphlet and called my mom and said, 'Don't bother to knit the sleeves.' "

"I never got attention from guys, and then the old story, I got the braces off ... my legs."

"My friend said, 'You have to read this book; it's a page turner. I said, '”Well, I know how books work."

“My friend was told by her doctor that she was morbidly obese ... as if she doesn't have enough on her plate.”

"Women reach their sexual peak after 35 years ... men after four minutes."

"I've always wanted to own a maternity shop. I'd call it:” We're Fucked!"

Ugh! Another of his Jokes.

A woman meets a man in a bar.

They talk; they connect; they end up leaving together. They get back to his place and
as he shows her around his apartment, she notices that one wall of his bedroom is
completely filled with soft, sweet, cuddly teddy bears.

There are three shelves in the bedroom, with hundreds and hundreds of
cute, cuddly teddy bears carefully placed in rows, covering the entire wall! It was
obvious that he had taken quite some time to lovingly arrange them, and she was
immediately touched by the amount of thought he had put into organizing the display.
There were small bears all along the bottom shelf, medium-sized bears covering the length of the middle shelf, and huge, enormous bears running all the way along the top shelf.

She found it strange for an obviously masculine guy to have such a
large collection of Teddy Bears,She is quite impressed by his sensitive side, but doesn't
mention this to him. They share a bottle of wine and continue talking and, after awhile, she finds herself thinking, "Oh my God! Maybe, this guy
could be the one! Maybe he could be the future father of my children?"
She turns to him and kisses him lightly on the lips. He responds warmly. They continue to kiss, the passion builds, and he romantically lifts her in his arms and carries her into his bedroom where they rip off each others clothes and make hot, steamy love.

She is so overwhelmed that she responds with more passion, more creativity, and more heat than she has ever known. After an intense, explosive night of raw passion with this sensitive guy, they are lying there together in the afterglow. The woman rolls over, gently strokes his chest and asks coyly, "Well, how was it?"

The guy gently smiles at her, strokes her cheek, looks deeply into her eyes, and says:

"Help yourself to any prize from the middle shelf."

Why Writers Write

	Why We Write
	Scott Archer Jones
	How to articulate the word's commanding need? In a stunning book about writing, Donald Murray listed twelve reasons why authors must write. Here in this list you will find simple rationales why you write, and why you're reading this. Myself? These twelve work for me. I fritter away hours imagining the motives of writers I respect through Murray's lens, guessing at their interior selves. Here they are, in their illogical glory. To Discover Who I Am: Virginia Woolf said, "I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I write." Like Woolf, I am myself again as I write. Writing gives me back the humanity and complexity that workaday life scrubs away. When I write, I am more than a list of tasks that need accomplishment, a series of barters and transactions that pries me out of bed and dumps me back into it at the end of day. The story is more than the sum of a human's parts. To Say I Am: The powerless voice, suddenly awake and awaking us. Allen Ginsberg, smothered under an American blanket of materialism, of bigotry and conformity, surely he stood up for himself -- and for other disenfranchised artists -- when he first read "Howl" aloud. To Create New Aspects of My Life: David Morrell tells his students and his readers, "Don't write what you know, write what you want to know." I would add, write who you might become. We contain multitudes. To Understand My Life: I surmise Richard Russo unraveled Empire Falls to illuminate what his relationship with his mother and what his thwarted dreams had been. I believe James Jones had to write and rewrite the military novel. He had to sift through his life for his own thin red line. Someday I will be good enough a writer to type out my broadside on corporate life. I will illuminate thirty years of that stranger who dedicated sixty hours a week, committed to teams that struggled mightily, kowtowed to authority that blindly thrashed out misery, and quit out of childish ego. And then I'll get it. Perhaps. To Slay My Dragons: Harlan Ellison transmitted major shocks of fear into his readers, fear that had to erupt from somewhere. Ellison, above all the horror writers I know, must have had dragons and bugs in his head waiting to be exorcised. "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" -- could he again sleep at night, once this piece hit paper? Have you imagined going blind, or having two legs being pulverized by an IED? Have you jarred awake after dreams of burning or drowning or raping? My characters can make these fears into real lives, and I need only listen to be healed. Or at least soothed. To Exercise My Craft: Consider Herman Melville, a writer we return to again and again, maybe the first modernist and a magician with his words. So few of his contemporaries could have written works that still matter now, as implacable change drives language generation after generation. Years wash away meager talent, but not Melville's craft. To write is a responsibility. To write well is a personal goal, unreachable, but one sought by writers I admire. How can there be authors who write casually, crapulously, who depend on charm and plot pacing to hurry the reader past literary debacle? To Lose Myself In My Work: Dylan Thomas, addicted to young admiring women, slipping along the alcohol fault-line to desperate damaged health: Thomas returned again and again to a beguiled childhood along the heron-priested shore -- searched for who he had been to avoid the grayness of who he had become. If to pay attention is our endless and proper work, how can we obsess about ourselves while we pay attention to the character? I've turned off endless self-maundering with five first drafts, freeing myself from myself. Don't we all, as we stare into the page? For Revenge: Did Melville mean Billy Budd as a revenge spelled out against a corrupt maritime system? Did Faulkner portray his neighbors as the boorish debauched Snopes's to get back at the Southern abuse heaped upon him? Yes, I too portray the petty bullies who made life a misery, but in surprise, I rediscover them as interesting humans, if not sympathetic. Revenge is best if true, and cooked up into words. To Share: Of authors I am reading now, Bruno Schulz stands out as the loneliest and most isolated. He sent his book Cinnamon Shops letter by letter to a friend, shared in a secret way. A stuffed envelope in the mail -- Schulz's only artistic outlet. But even Schulz had to launch his work out into the world. To Testify: When Roddy Doyle writes Paula Spencer, or John Steinbeck gives us Tom Joad, a writer champions those who have no voice. For me, to bear witness drives writing as much as any selfish authorial ego. Someone should speak for the working poor, the brown, the dismal white, the men and women so battered they also batter, the child so persecuted that only rage remains. I think I can be and should be one of those authors. To Celebrate: I believe Richard Brautigan wrote to celebrate, to spin out fantasies both outrageous and free, chanting a poetic line into the reader's sense of wonder. I believe Torrington wrote Swing Hammer Swing as an unashamed love song to Glasgow's tenements, even as the planners tore down the best and the worst. To Avoid Boredom: Boredom often attacked Kerouac. Indeed, he had a vast need for his words to be important to someone -- at the bottom of it all, below the ego's need, he drifted through the Beat world rummaging around for something to fascinate him -- whether it was the ramblings of a male prostitute strung out on bennie or William Burrough's imagined world-order of druggies, whores, artists and writers. One of the many reasons I write stems from how boring I am. Once a departing girl friend compared me to a sphere, present in life but perfectly featureless. Scathing, but close enough. But other people, now, that's a different thing. People are kaleidoscopic and they don't know it. Locked in despair, chained to a daily treadmill, they live thoughtlessly. They wall themselves up alive with their own rationalizations about small failures and they miss their own triumphs. They don't know how fascinating they are. Try it out -- if you ask, they will tell you the damnedest things. And all you can answer is, "Really? What happened next?" These people slide into fiction and march around in my head. Sometimes when I'm out wandering with my dog in the morning, I will snap into awareness -- first person point-of-view, present tense. The signs I've been absent show clear, the changes I haven't marked: wet boots, my jeans soaked up to the knee. The coffee has been drunk, the dog wants me to catch up. I've been talking to Maudy or Grace, Little Jan, Ezekias or Tommy the Rat in my head and they've been answering back. "That goddam horse shied back and quick as a flash, she jerked my thumb off." "No, I woulda nevah touched her, 'cause I'm not bi." "When he finally died, that's when the beatings stopped. The day after the service, I carried all of his clothes into the vacant lot next door and I burned them." "He was liquid fire. I couldn't help myself. When he asked me to pack a bag and slip into the car, I did. That was ten small towns back, when I knew my name." "This tattoo, see, on the back of my hand? It's for the time they raped me. I stare at it all the time." When on these morning rambles Maudy and Ezekias stop talking, I have to sort out where I am, what overgrown thicket of fir and spruce I'm in. Trudge downhill -- I'll stumble onto the road. The next day I might be ready to write down what one of them whispered to me. With all these people tramping around in my head, how can I not write? And they have to receive the voice they each deserve. The writing has to be good. They deserve great, in fact. And so the language has to be worked, over and over. Until they say it's right. Article © Scott Archer Jones. All rights reserved.Published on 2014-01-27

About Scott Archer Jones:

Scott Archer Jones is currently living and working on his fifth novel in northern New Mexico, after stints in the Netherlands, Scotland and Norway plus less exotic locations.  He’s worked for a power company, grocers, a lumberyard, an energy company (for a very long time), and a winery. He's been a finalist a few places but never a winner.  He's published here and there but received enough rejection to achieve humbleness.  

Scott cuts all his own firewood, lives a mile from his nearest neighbor and writes grant applications for the community. He is the Treasurer of Shuter Library of Angel Fire, a private 501.C3. He's on the masthead of the Prague Revue. 

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